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The Australian lending market has never been more competitive, with smaller margins, decreased cash rates and the threat of fintech and P2P disruptors. Customer experience is now the biggest differentiator for banks to win over customers and ultimately maximise market share.

But this ultimate goal comes with the added pressure of reducing costs via automation while retaining the human element in the midst of digitisation.

In an industry snapshot recently conducted for the 12th Annual Loan Origination Excellence conference held 13-15 February 2017 in Sydney, five of Australia's leading banking institutions share insights about their journey to loan process automation, all with the end customer in mind.

At the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, automation is being implemented across the bank’s cross platform services, to ensure customers have multiple channels of choice. The bank’s head of group lending services, Dan O’Neill, states, "About 30% of our customers now access a home loan calculator on a mobile device."

He delves into more detail within the full report, mentioning paperless lending and digital signatures are other pet projects at Australia’s largest retail bank. “CBA has already done this for asset finance and bank guarantees origination, loan origination is next.”

When asked about loan automation at Suncorp, Stuart Nielsen, head of banking process and optimisation commented, "Businesses are looking to the process side to deliver not only a cost advantage, but also a customer benefit.”

Suncorp is looking at process engineering as well as quantitative and qualitative customer metrics to help deliver greater value to their customers. The full industry report also highlights the bank’s same day home loan project as another key advancement leveraged by automation.

Meanwhile, Janine Copelin, managing director at Citibank, is focusing on the commercial bank’s Citi Priority offering. "Customers have needs greater than just a seamless home loan experience – they want to make sure they’ve got the bundle, with the cards attached and the right discounts." She also shares the vision behind the bank’s staff incentive scheme in the report, which ultimately centres around maximising customer experience and value.

At Bank Australia, paperless loan contracts has been an exciting and innovative change to the way the mutual bank works. "For customers, the advantages of digitised processes extend across easier process experience, no witnesses, faster receipt and submission times and quicker access to loan funds," states Martyn Norman, head of Lending.

A different perspective is offered by John Rolfe, head of home loans at Elders. "As a smaller institution, the challenge is to learn from large institutions, but not to replicate their customer engagement models." Going forward Elders is looking at maintaining the simplified model that saw them through the last decade of change.

These loan automation strategies are explored in the full industry report developed ahead of the Loan Origination Excellence conference held 13-15 February 2017 in Sydney.

Robotic process automation for banking and practical loan automation strategies for improved customer experience and reduced processing costs will be a key focus at the conference, with a global speaker panel of 16+ experts that includes HSBC, ANZ, India Bulls, Westpac, ING Direct, Joust, HashChing, Suncorp and more.